WAYNE WANDERING PRODUCTIONS

photo + video to tell your brand’s story

YOUR MOBILE PRODUCTION

A Production That Comes To You

Wayne Wandering Productions is a new business started by Wayne Culpepper. Wayne spent from 2004-2016, working full-time as a commercial photographer focused mostly on still photography. In March 2016, Wayne decided to head down a new path and start his own mobile production company that would travel and focus on projects shot on-location with a storytelling approach to both commercial still photography and video production. Thus Wayne Wandering Productions was born. Within its first year, assignments took him all around the United States and South America.

Propel Your Brand

And Tell Great Stories

If you’re a business that is looking for someone that can take the time to discover a way to communicate the heart of your brand and story then Wayne’s your man. In the last 13 years, Wayne has created campaigns and imagery for hundreds of companies including General Electric, Michelin, Southern Tide Clothing, Beija Flor Jeans, Verizon Wireless, BOSCH, Milliken, The YMCA, and Le Creuset falling into the categories of product, people/lifestyle, architectural, and aerial photography. Before launching his own business Wayne spent 12 years with FishEye Studios, which he helped to found and brand and where he was the lead photographer for many years. Now he’s out on the road with a new business focused on location assignments, and with his break into video production he has even more services to offer to meet your vision.

Latest News

The Wandering Continues

It’s been an exciting time lately, I recently spent a month of video production in Buenos Aires, Argentina where I produced content for an exciting company called Unsettled. Check out the video project HERE. I’m just back from two months in Guatemala where I shot a series of documentaries on indigenous Mayans for Better World Ed. I added a drone to my travel kit and I am enjoying the possibilities it has opened for aerial photography and video to mix in my projects.

When back at my home base in the US, I’ve had a combination of motion and still projects for various clients that have taken me all around the country. November has taken me to projects in NYC, Texas, and near my home in South Carolina. At the link, you can see some of the recent interior photography I’ve been doing of beautiful designs by panageries.com.

My Story

An Aspiring Renaissance Man

When Wayne’s not busy taking pictures for clients he’s training for American Ninja Warrior where he’s competed in two seasons. You can see one of his past runs here or watch his zany audition videos here. He co-created an award-winning musical comedy web-series called Absurducopia in which he acts, writes, and directs. Check out the latest award-winning episode here. His fine art has been shown in exhibits around the United States as well as in Belgium and China. When not on the road, you may find him at his home harvesting veggies and fruit where he’s designed a 5-acre permaculture-inspired edible landscape, jamming on drums/guitar in his room full of instruments or playing a show with a rock band.

Wayne Wandering Radio

A New Storytelling Podcast Launching Soon

Stay tuned for Wayne’s upcoming podcast that shares adventure stories near and far. Episodes will have on guests like top American Ninja Warrior Competitors to share their stories. Wayne will also be chronicling some of his own adventures including episodes about freight-train hopping, getting lost at sea, and cross-country motorcycle trips. The episodes are told in a radio-drama style complete with field recordings, music, and sound effects. Music is a combination of original music made by Wayne Culpepper and tracks from guests. Each episode also has a corresponding blog post with video and photographs from the actual stories that are unfolding in the audio on the podcast. Sign up for Wayne’s newsletter and be sent the link when the podcast is available on iTunes.

GET IN TOUCH

Would love to hear from you.

001-864-201-8506

wayne@waynewandering.com

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My lifelong dream has been to travel and document this incredible world we live in and to make a living doing it while creating visual content I find meaningful. I started Wayne Wandering Productions with this vision and as 2018 kicks in, I’m beyond grateful to see this vision happening more and more. In a few weeks, I’ll reach the 2-year anniversary of Wayne Wandering and it’s pretty incredible to see my dreams manifesting. In 2016, my first year in business, my goal was to do a project abroad within the year and thanks to Unsettled this came to fruition in Argentina. In 2017, thanks to Better World Ed and a referral from Unsettled, this goal almost doubled in Guatemala. With 2018, it looks like this goal will quadruple, if not more. I’m joining forces with Better World Ed (BWE) for all sorts of projects this year all around the US and the globe. Since November, I’ve spent 6 weeks with them in San Francisco, and close to 3 weeks with BWE in both Houston and NYC. On the horizon, we have BWE documentary filmmaking possibilities in Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Liberia, Australia, and Vietnam, just to name a few.

I’m now going all in making my collaboration with Better World Ed my main focus. I’m still working through and as Wayne Wandering for BWE projects and I’ll still be taking on some side projects outside of BWE, but won’t have the availability to take on as many. I’m grateful to my clients who have all been so understanding that I won’t be available as often and I’m so very grateful for all the work we’ve done together and the friendships we’ve forged.

With my new focus at BWE, I’ll be creating documentary videos about individuals from all over the globe as part of the BWE curriculum resource kit that is used in classrooms to support youth in practicing empathy, global literacy, and civic engagement—while also helping them practice math, reading, and writing.

When abroad, I’ll be in one country for around 3 weeks to a month at a time, before moving to another region. When in the US, I’ll be on the road for around a month, with quick trips to Greenville in between projects. A lot of friends have been asking me what will happen to my dog, my home, and to the special needs gentleman who has lived at my home for the last 5 years with me as caretaker. For those of you who don’t know, almost exactly 5 years ago, I befriended a Vietnamese refugee, a double-leg amputee named Trung, who had been living homeless for over 20 years. One rainy, cold weekend, I let him crash at my home until we could come up with a better option. Given that he had no form of ID, no local friends or family, and a history of not doing well in homeless shelters for various reasons, it was difficult to find a solution for a place for him to go. He said he wanted to continue to stay at my home and I let him stay for a few months. After a few months, he said he was even willing to quit drinking if he could stay longer. Over the next month, he got sober and he’s now been my housemate for nearly 5 years. My dog Luna has become his therapy dog and Trung cares for her as if it’s the most important job anyone ever had. Feeding Luna is the first thing Trung does every morning and she barely gets in a sip of water before he’s topping of her water bowl. Trung’s a sweetheart of a man and turned 60 this Christmas Day. He’s become part of the family.

Since I had made a commitment to continue to make sure Trung is cared for, trying to figure out who would care for him has been a big piece of the puzzle of trying to figure out how this would fit in with my dream of extensive world travel. As so often happens, my extraordinary family stepped in to save the day. It turns out my brother, Daniel, was looking for a new place to live and he was willing to move in and even become Trung’s new caretaker. There was a time when I wouldn’t even trust my brother in my house alone, let alone trust him to take care of another human. He was barely taking care of himself, was in and out jail, and on the path to an early grave. Both of our best friends had lost their lives in tragedies, but Daniel didn’t seem to see the writing on the wall. We feared he would be next. He finally hit rock bottom while spending 10 months in jail. It rocked him to his core. He found God and decided to change his life. And he’s been able to sustain it. He’s now a free man, been sober for 4.5 years, and he’s the real Daniel all of us that loved him felt like we’d lost so long ago, lost for what looked like would be forever.

I’ve never experienced anything that’s made me happier than having my brother back. Now getting to see him to selflessly take care of another human and to lovingly take care of my home, now his home, is the icing on the cake. And to be able to trust him that when I get home everything will be okay is such a wonderful feeling. Spending time reconnecting with my brother getting him moved in and settled has been the single greatest joy of my life. Whenever I’m back home we are now housemates, and it brings me back to the days of growing up together when we were kids and times were simpler and it just makes me so happy to see him sober and healthy. Okay, time to wipe away my tears and wrap up this longest post ever that probably should have been a blog entry. 🙂

They say hindsight is 20/20. It’s great to look back on my 11.5 years at FishEye Studios and to feel grateful and thankful. To look back at 2 seasons on Ninja Warrior and to understand that although I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, it really was the journey that mattered. Training for American Ninja Warrior helped me finally breakthrough health challenges during a long battle with Lyme Disease. A disease that often felt like a weight I carried for 10 years of my life that was holding me back from fully living and wholly pursuing my dreams. But it was beating this battle that that helped me understand what I really cared about and wanted out of life. It was this battle that helped me develop the grit I needed to have the opportunities that are currently being presented to me. And it’s interesting to think about how everything I’ve shared here is really just my interpretation of my story. My perspective of what happened. I could convince myself my circumstances mean something else. But I’m choosing the perspective that gives me purpose, gratitude, and momentum in the direction of my dreams. Why not?

I guess the moral of the story is don’t give up on your dreams. Mine haven’t come in the order or the timeframe I imagined, but I kept trying to move in the direction of where I wanted to go. Mostly baby steps, sometimes steps backward, lots of stubbed toes, some giant leaps without a net—but always steps. Looking back, I can understand everything has been just in the time and order it was supposed to be. It’s just hard to see it when you’re in it. Cheers to keeping on keeping on and cheers to an exciting 2018 ahead! Much love to everyone whose path I’ve crossed in this wild ride we call life! Keep the Faith. Hugs. ❤️❤️❤️

Exciting to see how this story I filmed with Better World Ed about bluesman/farmer/superman Mac Arnold is being used in classrooms all around the world. Here's a preview mixing in footage Mr.Saha's sent us from their class in Mumbai, India. https://vimeo.com/betterworlded/aishikpreview

A great message for today and every day captured at the end of a Better World Ed class:
"When you show these type of videos to kids at this young of an age for them, they can change their perspective of how they see people. So when they see a person of a different color, they don’t see them as different or as inferior, but they see them as just another person who does different things, but they like spiderman though. That’s one thing we have in common.
Padgett and I — we look different. We have different skin colors. We practice different things. We live in different places. But we love teaching. We both wear glasses. It’s small things like that that really connect the bigger things."
— Jordy Frias, Grade 4 Teacher, KIPP.
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#betterworlded#bwestories#teachertales#education#teacherstories#mlk#mlk2018 KIPP SchoolsKIPP Bay Area Schools Bay Area Teachers and Mathematicians Teach For India Teach For America Teach For All Teach For America-Bay Area Wayne CulpepperAbhi NangiaSripriya Mohan

Hope to see you tomorrow at Avenues: The World School where students will be presenting a project they created to showcase the impact of Better World Ed curriculum in their classrooms. I'll be speaking about creating BWE video content and showing behind-the-scenes footage from our latest docs filmed in Guatemala too. Info below. 🙂